


clean cuticles

by foolscapper



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Substance Abuse, but written somewhat vaguely, can be shipping if you'd like, csa mentions, im a simple creature, in the beginning scene, in the later part, it's shamelessly pleasant, the gang takes care of their own, well technically post-canon since the show doesn't have a new season out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:54:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29532990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolscapper/pseuds/foolscapper
Summary: "Yeah. You're like weebles. You just wobble, but you don't fall down." The silence that follows is of words being carefully considered. It occurs to Charlie that maybe they're all just getting too old now to beat down their feelings with gleeful teasing and awkward chuckles. Hesitantly, Mac whispers, "... You ever think about staying clean?"Him? Clean? Looking at Mac's nervous eyes in the darkness, Charlie tries to envision a world where he can ever survive outside of his suit of rotten armor. His shield made of melted paint cans and his blade forged from many beer bottles.(Charlie is rescued by the gang after losing his shit, and has to come down from a pretty bad high. A loose sequel to 'snip-snip-snickt', which you should proooobably read for decent context. This is just a shameless hurt/comfort fic, unbeta'd, and can be gen or shipping, depending on how you look at it.)
Relationships: Charlie Kelly & Dee Reynolds, Charlie Kelly & Dennis Reynolds, Charlie Kelly & Mac McDonald, Charlie Kelly/Mac McDonald
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	clean cuticles

**Author's Note:**

> See the prior IASIP fanfiction I had written, if you want a lot more context, this is a sequel to: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29399316
> 
> There's definitely some charmac themes, with charden and chardee sprinkled in there, but it can all be read as gen. Is this fanfic the most realistic IASIP in the world? Heaven's no, because none of these imbeciles can be good to each other for longer than five seconds. But you know, every once and a while... they make exceptions. IDK how well this even succeeded, but this is for you out there that craves the good ol' H/C the show doesn't really give us. I also deeply apologize for the lack of Frank in this Gang-themed entry; I have another entry in mind to wrap this up in a trilogy that features more frank and sidney, but we'll see how my writing energy does.
> 
> Warnings for general allusions to past CSA, and some mildly offensive, ableist homophobic language from the gang (i.e. retarded, homo, etc). 
> 
> I'll beta this later, don't kill me. :')

  
Charlie's fifteen years old but he's built smaller. He's always been smaller in just about every way, he thinks, except maybe in the bigness of his voice in a room with too much reverb. Like every corner of the room bounces the shrillness of his laughter, and every hallway sends his frantic rambling as far as a clap of thunder. He's made a concentrated effort lately to keep his mouth shut so people stop noticing, but it's not without great effort, and it honestly exhausts him trying to remember and reign it all in.

He closes his locker after quietly slipping a few less than educational items in there: a sketchbook full of trippy doodles, a folded up old sock that smells of chemicals, and a can of hairspray. He himself smells like someone in desperate need of deodorant and a few baths, his hair standing every which way, holes in his shirt and grass stains on his pants. You'd expect gnats to start buzzing around his head. Sometimes they do. Sometimes he snaps his hands together and a flattened fly tumbles to an anticlimactic end on the warped tiles.

It's embarrassing sometimes, when he's too self-aware, but it doesn't bother him most days. He's in control of his stench. He puts it on like armor. Every day he suits up for battle by digging shirts out of the laundry and unrolling used socks from under his bed. Besides, Mac still likes him, and the others still hang out with him, even when he does awful shit — because they do awful shit, too. It's all he really needs.

"Hey, dirtgrub, can you read this?"

Adriano was one of the coolest dudes in school. He had perfectly combed hair and the cleanest, crispest clothing money could afford. He smelled like the good cologne that clung to girl's shirts after a make-out session, and Charlie liked to catch a whiff of it in the hallway, even if it usually meant he was about to get messed with. The cool kids never visited unless they were bored or particularly inspired, and today, Adriano is approaching with a purpose in his step he hasn't seen since the time he talked him into giving up his weed for the common good. 

Charlie moves aside far enough to watch Adriano scribble something on his locker in sharpie: _BRAIN-DEAD WHITE TRASH_. He strains to make out the letters, but Adriano waves a hand dismissively before he really gets his bearings on the first word, popping his expensive collar with one smooth gesture. "Don't even sweat it, buddy. I know reading isn't your forte." Honestly, Charlie isn't even sure what a 'forte' is, but he sure would like to crawl into a fort for a couple days and avoid school.

"Fuck," someone in the little group says, "he reeks." 

Someone bops the kid on the hand sharply, as if that's the only conceivably rude thing that's been done here.

"The real reason I came here was to ask for a favor," Adriano says slowly, like he's retarded or something. The group crowds in with deep interest in whatever their natural born leader is saying (and one of them plugging their nose with a thumb and forefinger). "I heard you're pretty good with bugs. I mean, other than them living on you. We've got a need for an exterminator, and you're just the guy I need."

The small crowd parts, and a giggling girl with short pigtails and gel polish nails steps closer, shoves a Tupperware box into Charlie's hands. Something big and brown and dark is crawling around in there. Charlie closes his eyes, sighs, and says with some strained wariness, "C'mon, dude..." His fingers clasp more tightly on the plastic container, and something bad bubbles behind his lips, burns the same way it does when the teacher calls him up to read a paper he didn't even write himself. 

He still tastes the first spider sometimes, when he's sitting around and minding his own business. He remembers laughing awkwardly with the legs still stuck in his teeth.

Adriano frowns. "Charlie, it's just for a laugh, man. You did it the last time I asked." He throws his hands up, like he's in the middle of a play; really, he kind of is, and Charlie can appreciate the hustle in playing up a dictatorship in high school. Adriano'll never want for anything. "I thought you were supposed to be funny. Like the class clown, right? Everybody loves the class clown."

Some mildly decent person says, "Hey, this is kind of wrong," and is widely ignored. Another chants 'dirtgrub', and then someone else, and soon their cajoling echoes down the hallways, like generic Indian woops that early morning TV Land television burned into his impressionable little brain. A teacher pokes her head out of her classroom, shakes it, and then disappears back into the door. Charlie just wants to get this over with, so he smiles weakly, still with too much teeth. Pops the lid off —

And then the box is suddenly slapped upward and out of his hands. The spider ends up soaring somewhere else, skittering away to freedom despite the impossible fall, as Charlie turns and gives Mac a relieved, slightly dazed smile. The hero of the stories in his head. Mac's always been better at plucking the good scraps out of Charlie's gnarled, incomprehensible thoughts and building a tale an underdog can appreciate. Mac's the one with the slicked back hair, akin to a tough mafia gangster. His clothes are old, similar to Charlie's, but he smells like cigarettes more than lifestyle rot; it's a nice smell, the kind that makes Charlie’s smile grows in earnest, and now he doesn't really much care that he almost ate a spider — almost honed the mockery skills of a murder of students.

"Ugh, Ronnie the Rat," Adriano grumbles.

"Oh, hey man," Charlie says, as if none of what just happened had happened.

"Sorry, bro," Mac says briskly, and then throws a few pointed elbows at the empty air, a few dramatic blocks and knees. "I was just surprising Charlie with some sick karate moves I just learned." The crowd boos, their investment deflating — like Mac's a knife, slashing through their rubbery underbellies and leaving a flappy, floppy carcass of a balloon on the ground. They begin to disperse when the bell rings and herds them towards their last few classes for the day, the one's Charlie skips every other day. Mac casts a short glance to the words written in sharpie on his locker (he still isn't sure what it says), licks his thumb, and starts trying to scrub it away. "Charlie, what the hell? Some guy getting you to eat spiders is the complete opposite of bad ass."

"It's whatever," Charlie shrugs. "Can I get back into my locker?" He'd really like to get his can and sock and find a closet right about now.

"Maybe. Or," Mac says with a sigh, "We could just ditch and get some pizza. I'm starving, and the lunch today tasted like puke. C'mon." He reaches a hand around the nape of Charlie's neck and squeezes, not even a little bothered by the smell of the other teenager as they start walking down the hall. "Let's get the fuck out of here, man. The Freight Train's waiting, and you know Pete'll probably eat someone's arm if we don't move it."

Charlie hums in agreement, but they make it about ten steps before he stops and turns back around, fetching the abandoned Tupperware container off the floor.

They spend the next fifteen minutes on their hands and knees, looking for that spider.

* * *

Charlie jolts to alertness.

He's not sure when he got here, but it's definitely Mac and Dennis' apartment. There's a stench of copper and paint, grimy blood that everything sticks to his trembling hands, under his nails. There's the flat, hard toilet seat under him and someone's fingers carefully hooking beneath the short sleeves of his stained, sweat-soaked shirt — not trying to disrobe him, but trying to ground him without sending him into a screeching fit that everyone has practiced soothing at some point in their lives. 

"Hey hey hey," Mac says patiently. Charlie swears he hears him before he sees him, even though he's hunched down in front of him, sitting on the lip of the bathtub. Charlie looks down at the blood on his jeans, the dots infecting them just as chickenpox would. He never did get chickenpox, though. His mom always strained her nerves making sure he never got anything at all (but disease was never what damaged him, in the end). Charlie knows he must not be all that focused, because Mac reaches up and pats his cheek. Warm sudsy water makes everything in the room hotter; his hair sticks to his temples and a fog rolls up and reveals _'YOU SUCK'_ on the mirror in Dennis' handwriting, from some other time and place Charlie wasn't privy to. 

"Can I get this shirt off you now?" Mac asks. "Don't make it gay, dude."

" _You're_ gay," he huffs. 

Charlie wouldn't care if it was gay or not, honestly. He just lifts his hands up and lets Mac remove the disgusting piece of clothing off him. He can't smell himself like everyone else can. Mac spends less time with him now than he did when they were kids, so for a moment, he fears maybe Mac'll retch from one sniff of him. He doesn't, though. He just balls the shirt up and throws it in the otherwise pristine bin in the corner. 

Charlie remembers now, even if the drugged haze still permeates in his thoughts as though it were a stew that's bubbling over. He was trading some elementary school kid... candy bars in exchange for art supplies. Her name was Sidney, and she told him her dad _touches_ her. He had nightmares about what she said for days until he stalked that dad of hers home, he himself as high as a kite. And then he confronted him, nearly ripped his jugular out of his neck with his teeth. Charlie vaguely remembers hiding in bushes while police sirens wailed nearby. Remembers ending up slumped against the fence of his old elementary school. He remembers Mac coaxing him into Dennis' range rover and letting him lay flat in the back seat, across his lap.

He hopes Sidney's okay. He probably made everything worse. Shit. Fuck.

"Relax, Charlie. Hey." Mac peels open Charlie's vibrating, clenched fist. "God, you _gotta_ relax. Before you have some kind of aneurysm or heart attack or something."

Dennis nudges the door open with his hip. He's not cross-contaminated by Charlie in all this. There's no blackish blood smeared on his jeans like Mac, no rumpled shirt from where fingers had twisted and untucked the perfectly plaid attire he's wearing. He's got a tall glass of water in his hands, though, and he carefully nudges it at Charlie's hands. Dennis doesn't smile, but there's a blitheness there he's mastered in only the way _he_ can. "Drink up, you dehydrated bitch."

Charlie takes the glass and drinks it all, because he's thirstier than he remembers, and he wants to wash the taste of that terrible man out of his mouth. Mac starts unlacing his shoes, throws them in the corner one after the other. He unrolls socks and flings them. His eyebrows are doing that deep scowly thing that only his can do, and he almost seems distraught by something, but in that way that you've only just realized you _should_ be distraught. As if something was under your nose the whole time, and you only just realized it.

"When's the last time you bought socks, man?"

"Iunno," Charlie mutters.

"I'll get some of mine," Dennis says, vanishing out the doorway. "Anything in _my_ drawer? High-grade material. Prepare to be jealous."

Mac moves to unbuckle Charlie's jeans, and Charlie's hand slaps his away, sharp and maybe harder than he meant. 

"... Charlie," he sighs. "Man, they're covered in blood. You _do_ remember trying to rip a man's throat out, right?"

Charlie shifts uncomfortably. "I'm not wearing underwear."

"Uh. Aright. Why not?"

"I don't have anymore. Who needs underwear, anyway?"

Mac rolls his eyes, and in any other situation, they'd break into a long-winded, stupid debate about whether underwear is or isn't an essential article of a daily outfit. But he just pats Charlie's knee to keep him as sharp as he can get him. "Do you trust me, dude?"

"Uh — yeah, of course. 'Course I do."

"Then trust me now. Jeans off, no homo, tub next. Do you want to have that sick bastard's blood all over you?" The thought of it sends a bunch of tiny dime-sized hands skittering all up and down his arms and neck. He shakes his head sharply — no, no blood. He's losing count of the times Mac's had to drag him away from somewhere, kicking and bloody, and shove him under a hot shower to get rid of the evidence. But he wants it to be gone, just like every time before. Dennis returns long enough to put down a full set of clothes on the sink counter before hooking his arms under Charlie's pits and helping to pick him up; he's all deadweight right now; legs are jelly; brain's in a mist he can't walk out of; he's drifting bad.

"You're just coming down from being super fucking blazed," Mac reminds him. "What did you even _take_?"

... Did he say something before that?

Mac and Dennis grunt, bear the brunt of his weight before they let Charlie sink into warm bath water. Even his bones feel like they're toneless, flopping like the rubber pencil magic trick (he's still not sure how they do it). Tile wall meets the side of his head, and he lounges in the sensation of needing to sleep and hurl at the same time. A warm rag smooths over his beard. Opening one hazel eye, he notices it comes toward him gray, leaves his face burnt sienna. Soap lathers whiskers. A few of those whiskers are gray and kind of frizzy-looking.

Mac wrings the dirty rag into the sink to try and salvage the bath water.

"You can't keep doing this," Dennis says. He picks up Charlie's hand and starts scrubbing nimbly at his blood-crusted cuticles with one of his gay scrubbing brushes. "Mixing drinking and drugs like you're still in high school? You're in your late forties. Your _super_ late forties. Now, I'm an immortal god. But you? You're gonna kill yourself, and I'll tell you now, you're stressing Mac right the hell out. He's doing his obnoxious loop around the table. Like he's a brain-damaged raccoon in an animal sanctuary."

"Sorry," Charlie croaks after a beat. "For being trouble."

The brush hesitates. Adjusts. Scrubs the last finger on his right hand pink-clean.

" _Buddy_ , we're _all_ trouble," Dennis grouses. "I'm just ordering you not to kill yourself on our watch, kid."

He's not a kid. Hell, the gang's mostly the same age, other than Frank. But they always call him one, and he has a hard time seeing why.

Maybe because he still uses crayons to draw — but it just feels right.

Honestly, he doesn't remember the rest of the soak. He's pretty sure he pissed in the tub at some point, but that's just what happens anyway when he's drank too much, and they should just be glad it was here and not on someone's couch. He floats as though he really did die, though. He floats on clouds and, after the morticians dress him in something really comfortable, he's laid down on some kind of really cozy coffin, one with a pillow that smells like Mac. He buries his face in it and breathes in deep. It's not cigarette smoke like Mac's childhood pillow used to smell, but it's nice. 

People keep nudging his corpse back to life long enough to make him drink water. He reaches out blindly and finds a skinny wrist that he immediately recognizes as Dee. He peels his eyes open until he can see her and the halo that the light above her casts in her golden locks. If he didn't know any better, he'd say she looks beautiful. Not an ostrich or an emu, but like — a - a great egret, or a secretary bird. Sometimes the light outside of the bar hits her a certain way and he likes her more than he should, even after all the weird stuff, in ways he probably shouldn't.

"C'mon, nerd." She sounds like she does any time one of them is nursing a hangover: slightly peeved that she's stuck with the job, but taking the task anyway, no matter how obnoxious and offensive any of the boys are. "Drink up. You look like shit."

There's no sense of care in her tone, but he does feel her thumb swipe away a sliver of escaped water, before it reaches his throat.

She wipes at the corner of one of his eyes, too.

* * *

When he finally wakes up out of what was the worst collection of nightmares he's sampled, he feels a warm outline next to him. It's been a long time since he's felt that particular shape, not since a teenaged Mac sharply told him it was too gay to be laying in the same bed anymore. Charlie breathes softly in the dark expanse of Mac's room, feeling judged by the Jesus hanging on his cross across the room; what does he know, anyway? He died forever ago.

"I thought we were too old for this shit," Charlie says.

"Nah, man. I was too young for this shit," Mac says. Charlie admits, he doesn't completely get it, but he's not about to complain now. There's a quiet, just the sounds of their breathing for a moment. "Listen, Charlie, I... uh. You scared the hell out of me tonight. Usually you just bounce back from, like, anything. You could get hit by a car and end up at work the next day. But, uh... You were really not doing so hot, this last time. Coming down. You need to start taking better care of yourself."

"Don't worry, Mac," he says, "Nothing'll ever kill me. I'm impenetrable."

When he closes his eyes, he sees a scared little girl, asking him how to keep the adults off her. He sees himself, quivering wide awake as the shadow at his bedroom door creeps over RC cars and crayons and neon footballs. He wants to undo all of the cleaning they did to him tonight, go outside and roll around and pluck worms out of the ground and rub dirt on his arms until the freckles vanish. When he tries to look at his clean cuticles, he finds it too dark in this space to see anything at all. 

"Yeah. You're like weebles. You just wobble, but you don't fall down." The silence that follows is of words being carefully considered. It occurs to Charlie that maybe they're all just getting too old now to beat down their feelings with gleeful teasing and awkward chuckles. Hesitantly, Mac whispers, "... You ever think about staying clean?"

Him? Clean? 

He turns with great effort, because his body feels as if he's been thrown through a woodchipper. It's preposterous, because he didn't even do that much; maybe overdrank the booze, overbreathed the nitrous oxide; maybe should have left the pills Frank had on his side of the bed alone. Looking at Mac's nervous eyes in the darkness, Charlie tries to envision a world where he can ever survive outside of his suit of rotten armor. His shield made of melted paint cans and his blade forged from many beer bottles. 

"I don't know, man," he admits. "... I just want to make sure Sidney's okay."

The corners of Mac's eyes pinch. He has that dog-eyed look about him, like you're the greatest person he's ever laid eyes on. Charlie loves that look, like he loves the way his forehead wrinkles. He basks in it. "She'll be alright. I'm sure she'll be alright. That shit isn't all a person's made out of, when it happens."

A hand gently reaches out, cups the back of his neck. It almost feels like an apology, a quiet way to bridge the distance that had started, so very slowly, after graduation. Mac smiles.

"You're pretty bad ass, Charlie."

At that, he buries his face in Mac's shirt. His stomach is churning, but his mind impossibly lit up, the brightness of it bleeding through his ears and nostrils, making the space behind his teeth glow. Mac buries his nose in Charlie's hair like they're nine or ten again, as if Charlie was his first unspoken crush and he can't bring himself to ever say it out loud. He snorts loudly, the rumble of his breath rustling Charlie's hair like grass in a meadow.

"Wow — You actually smell _good_."


End file.
